Post-photographic equipment (1): What kind of monitor does a photographer need?

This paper is a series of digital photography post-processing courses, focusing on PS technology. ?

This chapter is a guide to equipment purchase in the later stage, which mainly introduces how to choose a monitor that meets the requirements.

? Regarding how to choose a monitor, many people's first reaction is that I can just buy a good monitor. So what is a good monitor? In fact, the quality of the monitor depends on the user. For example, if we choose headphones, the monitor that can correctly display colors is equivalent to monitor headphones, and the one with better colors is equivalent to HiFi headphones. The difference between monitor headphones and HiFi headphones. There is no parameter value in itself, and it is faithfully restored, which is used by sound engineers to avoid hearing things off center. A manufacturer's modification makes the sound cooler. Most of these headphones are used to listen to music.

? In fact, the display is the same. Professional photographic displays can faithfully restore colors and prevent chromatic aberration. However, some monitors in game or cinema mode may obviously increase saturation or be warmer, so it is more comfortable to play games and watch movies with these monitors. However, repairing photos with such a display is easy to lead to color cast, either gray or blue. So many times, professional monitors don't look as bright as ordinary home monitors or even televisions. It is obviously unreasonable to draw the conclusion that professional monitors are not as good as TV sets. Therefore, as a professional photographer, you need a professional photographic display.

? In addition, whether a wide color gamut display is needed is also a question that can make many people hesitate. One is the institutional problem. If you usually use macOS, there is no problem in using an external wide color gamut display, but if you use Windows, you will face the chaotic color management problem under Windows. Secondly, monitors that can really support a wide color gamut are expensive. Please ignore those products that are cheap and advertised as 105% Adobe RGB color gamut. Please believe that you got what you paid for. But in any case, if you have strict requirements for image quality, or if you have wide color gamut requirements, such as printing, design and other purposes, then a display that supports wide color gamut is necessary. As the saying goes, it is reasonable to buy such an expensive camera lens, and it is not bad to buy a monitor.

? Therefore, as a photography enthusiast, you should first buy a professional photographic display with high color reproduction, and then choose whether you need a wide color gamut display according to your own needs. So how to choose the monitor specifically? Let's take BenQ's BenQ SW270C professional monitor as an example to illustrate how to choose a monitor. Let's take a look at the official appearance and parameters of this monitor first:

Let's look at a few parameters that we are more concerned about.

A. Color gamut support and coverage: We need to choose at least one monitor that supports ≥95%sRGB to meet daily use. Because the color space of pictures in common network environment is sRGB. Adobe RGB's color gamut covers most of the colors that can be reproduced by ordinary output devices today. If you are interested in painting texture, at least choose a monitor that supports ≥ 99% SRGB and ≥ 95% Adobe RGB. SW270C can support ≥99% of Adobe.

RGB is a very good display. In addition, don't look at some monitors covered by standard NTSC color gamut. As mentioned above, this color gamut has no practical value at all, and it is either stupid or bad for manufacturers to promote this color gamut. The most important parameter we need to care about is the support rate of sRGB and Adolberg.

B. Contrast: Contrast is actually an easily overlooked parameter. If the contrast is not enough, it usually means that black is not black enough. Generally, the contrast ratio of top monitors rarely reaches 1500: 1, and the TV probability is higher. This monitor can reach 1000: 1, which is quite good. It should be noted that the contrast of general TV sets is much higher than that of monitors.

C color depth: a higher color depth can make the picture display smoother, 8bit can display 256(28) levels of different brightness, and 10bit (2 10) levels of different brightness, making the color transition more natural. At present, mainstream displays generally adopt 8-bit panels, and there are two kinds of 10-bit panels, one is analog dynamic 10-bit panel, and the other is native 10-bit panel. The display effect is native 10 bit > analog 10 bit > 8 bit. If funds permit, it is recommended to choose a display with a color depth of 10bit.

D. Color accuracy: Color accuracy refers to the accuracy of color display, which is measured by △E. Generally speaking, if △ E is less than or equal to 2, no color deviation can be seen. And the smaller the δ e value, the smaller the deviation from the standard color. Therefore, for a display, the smaller the δ e value, the better. At present, the general display manufacturers do not mark this parameter, mainly because fewer users pay attention to this parameter, and fewer monitors make better color coding. But this is a very important parameter. Imagine what would happen if you bought a monitor with an obvious color cast and repaired the photo?

Other parameters, such as brightness, interface, color gamut selection and other functions, are available in most slightly formal brands of monitors, so I won't introduce them in detail here. However, if you are using Windows, the color gamut selection function is still necessary. You can switch to the sRGB color gamut to prevent the interface from over-saturation and color cast, and switch back to Adobe RGB to enjoy the value brought by the high color gamut in retouching. Still based on SW270C, its two-color domain mode allows photographers to see two color modes on the same screen at the same time, effectively preventing the color difference caused by different color modes.

Finally, regarding the color correction of the display, we often say that color correction is actually software color correction. Software color correction can only make the display display correctly within its capacity, thus correcting the color deviation of the display, but it cannot expand the color display range, and the colors beyond its display capacity will still be ignored or compressed. It is the biggest misunderstanding of many people that color correction displays are omnipotent. In the case of non-strict use, it is generally not necessary to correct the color of the display unless it is used for a long time. However, even if you use it all the year round, a professional photographic monitor like BenQ sw270c will even remind you to correct the color regularly, so you don't have to worry about the problem that the monitor is out of alignment unconsciously. In addition, you can directly use a display with its own color calibration, such as BENQ SW270C. On the other hand, the opposite of software color correction is hardware color correction, which directly puts the color management file inside the display, so that the same color effect can be maintained even if the host is changed.

After choosing the monitor, another question is how many monitors do you need? Now all PCs and Macs can connect multiple monitors. Perhaps many readers have never used more than one monitor. However, if desktop space permits, I strongly recommend that readers use two monitors. Many friends around me feel very practical after using dual monitors at my suggestion. We can retouch the picture on the display and select the picture on the display or compare it as a reference. It will be more useful if you are a time-lapse photographer. One display is used as ACR for post-processing and the other is used as Lr delay for process management. I currently use three monitors, BenQ SW270C for retouching, another for film selection, and a Samsung monitor for chatting.